Set primarily in Mexico and the American Northwest, yet equally at home with Achilleus on the Trojan plains or with Walt Whitman in his New Jersey home, these fifteen essays pass back and forth across international boundaries as easily as they cross the more fluid lines separating past and present. Part biography, part history, Augury is also something of a writer's journal, a guide to Garrison's imaginative journeys.

PHILIP GARRISON's books include Waiting for the Earth to Turn Over: Identity and the Late Twentieth-Century American West, The Permit That Never Expires: Migrant Tales from the Ozark Hills and the Mexican Highlands, and Because I Don't Have Wings: Stories of Mexican Immigrant Life. A professor of English emeritus at Central Washington University, Garrison currently directs the APOYO food and clothing bank, which he founded in 1995, with several members of the Mexicano community.